Sunday, September 23, 2012

OK, I know we had a good title in there, but I forgot it and frankly, I don't feel like going through the whole thing to find it....
Four years ago we three got together (for the first time) on episode 8 to talk politics and technology. We also, happily, had a visit from the ever popular Isabelle.
We talked about the influence of social media and tech on elections and campaigns, and the current problems in the mid East that seem to have been brought on by a mix of a hateful 'movie' and a bunch of twits who don't understand that in the West the government does not really own the media.....
For a bit of historical perspective, Robin suggested you check out an article in the New Yorker.
In the end we all predict an Obama victory. Let's see if we are right....
We hope you enjoy episode 30.

2 comments:

SF about elections: Heinlein wrote a book about an election--Double Star. (And in Starship Troopers--the novel, not the ridiculous move--the reason the hero originally joined the military was in order to get a vote, and there was a lot of lecturing about citizenship and the like.)

Isabelle's email about winning a chance to have dinner with Obama by contributing to the campaign? He's had a series of these dinners so far, each with a group of small contributors. It's not a bad hook, $3 or $4 for a chance to have dinner with the president.

So far as I know, there has been absolutely no move to electronic voting anywhere in the States--that would make voting easier and more convenient. The only organized effort to do anything about voting is the right-wing continuing efforts to pass laws to make it harder to vote (and to defend the laws that pass in the courts), and groups that stand around at polling places challenging minorities, in the hope that they will all go away before they vote Democratic.

What I really wonder about if the low-ion-Twitter-cannon Obama had during the 2008 election; if he had said "boo" thousands upon thousands would have hammered e-mails and phone-calls to their congress-critter demanding support.Instead, we got silence. Still got it today...